Main objection to the Austrian Business Cycle Theory is rational expectations - they can't prevent entrepreneurs from making use of loose credit because they would be left behind if they didn't.
Praxeology - economics - provides no ultimate ethical judgments: it simply furnishes the indispensable data necessary to make such judgments. Common criticisms of the free market are refuted praxeologically in this chapter. Absolute equality is an impossible goal.
Walter Block met Rothbard in 1966. Here, Block tells a joke making the point that antitrust law is dead from the neck up. There is nothing wrong with a monopoly price. Whatever price the free market establishes will be the best price.
This completes the study of money and of the effects of changes in monetary relations on the economic system. Like all commodities, money has its own supply and demand and price: purchasing power. Everyone deals in money.
The pricing, supplies, and incomes of particular factor prices - labor and land - and the effects of a changing economy upon them are discussed as Rothbard viewed them. The theory of rent is a highlight of this chapter. The Mengarian causal-realist tradition is integrated here.
Power & Market - this second section of Rothbard's book - shows the state was to be protector of the people and property, but the government is contradictory to that task. Government both taxes and demands a monopoly of defensive services within a geographical area.
How are money prices determined? The stock of the money commodity responds to demand and supply of the consumers and their preferences just as with any other good.
This middle chapter on production theory goes into detail on factor pricing and discounted marginal value product. The way Rothbard developed every aspect of production theory is unique. As the economy becomes more specialized and complex, the importance of this market process becomes greater.
Here Rothbard deals with the pure rate of interest, as determined by time preference. It's a ratio of prices between present and future goods. The interest rate is equal to the rate of price spread in the various stages of production. It pervades all time markets.
